COVID-19/Coronavirus thread

[michelangelosmonkey]

15 minutes ago, NorthSideSox72 said:

That mobility is another reason why fast action was needed. It was not taken. Trump did next to nothing until March, while the rest of the first world acted. Also, in 1960 (I can't find '57 specifically), the US had a population of 187M, which means it has not tripled since then, it has doubled. If you want to say COVID has so far been only 3 times as deadly, instead of 6 times, OK. Either way it's a huge failure. Semantics.

If you want to blame China for things, I agree 100%. They have blood on their hands. China was bad, so was Trump, though for different reasons (I don't think Trump was trying for deceiving the world, so much as he is just a continuous victim of his own magical thinking). Why are you trying to defend one and not the other, other than the very partisanship you seem to be blaming?

Also...

That. The states stepped up when TrumpCo failed, and it has helped immensely. And even WITH those measures, COVID has been killing people at multiple times the rate of similar previous events. It is far more transmissible, and causing far more death. These really are not disputable facts.

 

Sorry...yes I was thinking of 1918...100 million people and 675,000 dead, 1957: 172 million people  116,000 dead, 1968 200 million people 100,000 dead.  Today 330 million 85,000 dead.  

So balancing for today's population

1918: 2.2 million

1957: 222,000

1968: 165,000 

Today: 85,000

And just for fun, bubonic plague Italy

14th Century: 200,000,000

How do you figure it is 6 times more deadly or 3?  Not semantics...math.   Either way its a deadly virus.  Viruses can be bad.  

China's actions were those of a totalitarian state that was purposely hiding things.  I've looked at the time lines we took and the deaths and trying to be fair minded thinking how do you decide where the prudent decision is.  I think the president took, and was deeply criticized for, some big decisions.   He missed on some too.  If you want to live in your tent and blame all unknown on him...whatever.  

[greg775]

1 hour ago, michelangelosmonkey said:

Of course the president made missteps.  I guess on a sports talk site where "I can't believe he threw the curve ball with runners on second and third and a pitch to waste" is de rigueur.   I also think when the loudest and most energetic voices that come here are Democrats, non-stop criticism about the president crowds out other voices.   Still this section was supposed to be about the virus and as I said...it started off interesting but the streams of hurled accusations followed by "I can't believe HE made this political" is "not compelling".  

As for the government scaling things up...again perfect hindsight.  The government should have just taken the government factories and started producing testing immediately.  In fact it's amazing that we didn't have an enormous stock pile of tests for this never-before-seen virus in government warehouses someplace.  And imagine our incompetence that 60 days after this never-before-seen virus started invading our country that we were not 100% prepared.  

If you start with the end point..."The President is an idiot" then you fill in the evidence to make it work and throw out evidence that doesn't fit the narrative and then shout it from the rooftops and have it echoed by people that think exactly as you do it may seem as if you have the truth.  It just doesn't seem convincing to me.  I think the president is an egomaniac and I hate his NYC aggressive style...it offends my Midwest sensibilities.  I thought President Obama was one of the most decent men to ever be president...but to say he would have done better is farcical.   President Trump is not trying to kill off his voters.  He and his advisors are trying to make heroes of themselves...which is exactly what I want my leader to do in a crisis.    

Everything is so political. It's so tiring. Democrats and Republicans have never totally despised each other like this before. It's utter hatred. Everything is about politics. Sad.

[bmags]

32 minutes ago, Jerksticks said:

So what does this mean?  Is it accurate to say that 21300 people felt sick enough to go get tested and 2300 of them tested positive for Covid?

Tests have been broadened significantly, while some places still require symptoms, many allow testing if you believe to be exposed.

But yes it's positive daily tests/total daily tests

[southsider2k5]

53 minutes ago, michelangelosmonkey said:

I told my students January 27th..."well that's it, the end of the world has arrived...don't worry about your homework now".  I mean really, when China closed down all traffic in and out of a region covering 40 million people because a few thousand had a new flu?   There was something terrible that we didn't know about.  That they knowingly allowed hundreds of thousands to leave the area the days before the shut down and travel all over the world was negligently launching the missile?  Everything that happened after that was just waiting.  I was right but not proud of it (and thankfully this thing is not as deadly as initially thought).     

So if the general public knew that much, and the White House took zero action to protect the general public, you don't see a problem there?

[michelangelosmonkey]

6 minutes ago, StrangeSox said:

He wasn't telling people to stay calm. He was saying we had 15 cases and it was going to go to zero soon. Either he was profoundly unprepared to handle what was coming very shortly, something that he had been warned about internally for weeks by that point, or he was lying to the American people in a deeply damaging way.

He continues to push unproven and dangerous fixes to this day. It's dangerous.

Ventilator production was eventually ramped up after long delays. Thankfully, thanks to effective social distancing measures, our hospitals haven't been overwhelmed and the initial shortages didn't cost lives.

Instead, states have had to bid against each other while the federal government confiscates supplies to do who knows what with them. A competent government would have ramped up PPE production in January or February. Other countries haven't seen the level of dysfunction we have.

He has no direct power to force states closed or open. What he has done is claim that he has this power, told states to do what they think is best, had his administration release guidelines for opening and then strongly attacked those states and encouraged protests and defiance if they don't open up right away in contradiction with his own guidelines. 

 

The CDC is not advocating for locking down forever. This is more lazyiness. They in fact have put out guidelines for states reopening, though they were initially blocked by Trump officials. I'm not willing to simply write off the lives of the elderly or have some other disease. A competent federal government would be able to stem the economic damage, but the failures there include both parties in Congress. I too have friends who have suffered huge downturns in their business, but they both fully support taking sane, rational measures to address a pandemic. 

This is one lazy half-truth excuse after another.

It was completely ridiculous of me to try to come to DNC headquarters and try to argue that the virus is a virus and people are going to die almost no matter what we did and that non-stop blaming of the president is boring.  But you win.      

[southsider2k5]

40 minutes ago, StrangeSox said:

 

 

So apparently the President is COVID positive, or why else would he be taking this.

 

[StrangeSox]

2 minutes ago, michelangelosmonkey said:

It was completely ridiculous of me to try to come to DNC headquarters and try to argue that the virus is a virus and people are going to die almost no matter what we did and that non-stop blaming of the president is boring.  But you win.      

More lazy responses to arguments nobody actually made.

 

[michelangelosmonkey]

1 minute ago, southsider2k5 said:

So if the general public knew that much, and the White House took zero action to protect the general public, you don't see a problem there?

I was JOKING to my class.  But yes...the president should have done something...like declare it a public health crisis and put in travel restrictions from China a few days later...which is what he did in spite the criticisms of racism that he received (and both Pelosi and Cuomo encouraging their citizens to go to Chinese New Year celebrations over the warning of the Federal government.  But...you know...all Trumps fault.  What would have you done?   

[michelangelosmonkey]

5 minutes ago, Tony said:

But you're right, there was nothing else the administration could have done, they clearly took it very seriously from the start. Idiotic hindsight....that's what it is. 

And three days later he shut down travel from Europe.  You pull little quotes out of the 10 million words the president has spoken in the last four months and twist them into a narrative that makes him look like he wasn't doing anything.  The total deaths on February 26th from Corona virus in the US were zero.  ZERO!!!   Should we have shut the country down then?   Hello all Americans...I know no one has this and no one has died from this and the cure will cost trillions of dollars but we are going to shut this place down February 26th.  Honestly its stupid hindsight argument.  

[Balta1701]

8 minutes ago, michelangelosmonkey said:

It was completely ridiculous of me to try to come to DNC headquarters and try to argue that the virus is a virus and people are going to die almost no matter what we did and that non-stop blaming of the president is boring.  But you win.      

The US has 3% of the World's population and almost 30% of it's confirmed deaths. Even China, which you complain about, got this mostly under control within 2 months, while we're throwing in the towel because we're unable to get it under control. So somehow, large other sections of the world figured out how to control it or even eliminate it, but not us. 

If we had 3% of the world's confirmed deaths, comparable to our population, we would have 7000 dead.

[Balta1701]

4 minutes ago, michelangelosmonkey said:

And three days later he shut down travel from Europe.  You pull little quotes out of the 10 million words the president has spoken in the last four months and twist them into a narrative that makes him look like he wasn't doing anything.  The total deaths on February 26th from Corona virus in the US were zero.  ZERO!!!   Should we have shut the country down then?   Hello all Americans...I know no one has this and no one has died from this and the cure will cost trillions of dollars but we are going to shut this place down February 26th.  Honestly its stupid hindsight argument.  

And that was an abject nightmare that produced crowds of coughing people in tightly confined spaces at airports over a weekend and probably was a major super-spreading event in early March, because it was handled incredibly poorly by the federal government.

It had to be done...but frankly we'd have been better off not doing it than doing it and producing the massive crowds at customs that we created. If we weren't planning for how to isolate everyone who came in, and we made tens of thousands of people rush back in, and created the conditions for them to spread it, yeah that was a nightmare.

[michelangelosmonkey]

Just now, Balta1701 said:

The US has 3% of the World's population and almost 30% of it's confirmed deaths. Even China, which you complain about, got this mostly under control within 2 months, while we're throwing in the towel because we're unable to get it under control. So somehow, large other sections of the world figured out how to control it or even eliminate it, but not us. 

If we had 3% of the world's confirmed deaths, comparable to our population, we would have 7000 dead.

You honestly can't believe the numbers from China???   Still India, Indonesia, Pakistan?   Something weird about this virus.  Oh thats right...they don't have Trump as president intentionally killing us. 

 

[Balta1701]

2 minutes ago, michelangelosmonkey said:

You honestly can't believe the numbers from China???   Still India, Indonesia, Pakistan?   Something weird about this virus.  Oh thats right...they don't have Trump as president intentionally killing us. 

 

No,  but I definitely believe they don't have a thousand people dying per day right now. They got it under control within 2 months, from January to March cases dropped to very few. From March to May, we leveled out and declared we can't do any better.

And we also know, beyond any doubt, that deaths in this country have skyrocketed way higher than the official count as well.  

[michelangelosmonkey]

2 minutes ago, Balta1701 said:

And that was an abject nightmare that produced crowds of coughing people in tightly confined spaces at airports over a weekend and probably was a major super-spreading event in early March, because it was handled incredibly poorly by the federal government.

It had to be done...but frankly we'd have been better off not doing it than doing it and producing the massive crowds at customs that we created. If we weren't planning for how to isolate everyone who came in, and we made tens of thousands of people rush back in, and created the conditions for them to spread it, yeah that was a nightmare.

I get so twisted in the arguments.  He was an asshole for not doing anything about the spread of the virus from Italy and he is an asshole for doing something to stop the spread of the virus from Italy.  And you are really positioning yourself as arguing in a non-partisan way?  

[caulfield12]

1 hour ago, Balta1701 said:

And then for that entire next month we refused to take test kits from overseas, the CDC insisted on developing their own and they were faulty, and as a consequence we imported cases from Italy in Mid-Feb, they got to New York totally undetected because we went 3 weeks with almost no tests, the FDA was ordering private labs not to do any testing, there were several super-spreading events, and by March 1 there were probably several thousand active cases floating around New York City with 1 positive test. 

Washington and California responded to realizing they had major outbreaks with full shutdowns that week, but New York City and many other states dithered, allowing it to spread around the country even more over the next several weeks. 

The US didn't take advantage of that month to begin acquiring supplies, we were even shipping them overseas in February. We didn't come up with response plans, we didn't begin preparing people for any sort of actions they might have to take. We weren't working on 14 day quarantines for people coming from infected areas, we weren't even assuming community spread was possible. The people at the CDC, incuding Trump's appointee at the top, were a complete disaster. 

The only quarantines at the time were literally those who were coming from here in Wuhan.   Unless you somehow had contact with someone that was known to be infected (and how could you you possibly determine they were an asymptomatic carrier?), it was impossible to get a test.

Plus, we are miles behind the majority of Asian countries (not just China) in usage of health code apps, tracking and tracing apps, mobile payments for delivery of food and grocery online, built out last mile logistics and delivery systems.  How many thousands of people contracted it from single trips to crowded or overcrowded grocery stores?

[southsider2k5]

10 minutes ago, michelangelosmonkey said:

Sorry...yes I was thinking of 1918...100 million people and 675,000 dead, 1957: 172 million people  116,000 dead, 1968 200 million people 100,000 dead.  Today 330 million 85,000 dead.  

So balancing for today's population

1918: 2.2 million

1957: 222,000

1968: 165,000 

Today: 85,000

And just for fun, bubonic plague Italy

14th Century: 200,000,000

How do you figure it is 6 times more deadly or 3?  Not semantics...math.   Either way its a deadly virus.  Viruses can be bad.  

China's actions were those of a totalitarian state that was purposely hiding things.  I've looked at the time lines we took and the deaths and trying to be fair minded thinking how do you decide where the prudent decision is.  I think the president took, and was deeply criticized for, some big decisions.   He missed on some too.  If you want to live in your tent and blame all unknown on him...whatever.  

1918 was a Big One.  1957 and 1968 saw those death totals with zero shutdown or prevention.  2020 saw us go over 90k officially in TWO MONTHS (probably at least 100k in reality) with close to a full shutdown.  And death rate is deaths divided by cases.  It has nothing to do with populations at the time of the outbreak.  For example, the H1N1 story was one that got a lot of right wing shares early on.  For that one, they tried to equate 12,000 deaths in 60 million infections as being worse than Covid was at the time, because then Covid only had 38 deaths.  You were supposed to look at the 12,000 number and not understand that if you divided 12,000 cases by 60 million infections you got a mortality rate of 0.02%.  If you look at case numbers two months later of course instead of 38 deaths, you have 91,730 deaths in only about 1.5 million cases.  The mortality rate in the US has been around 6% versus the 0.02% of swine flu.  If we had the same number of covid cases as swine flu cases, we'd be looking at 3.6 million deaths with the same mortality rate. 

Now assume that we have been massively underestimating the test count, and literally 10 times as many people have gotten this, while instead of underestimating the deaths like we actually have we were spot on, so the mortality rate is .6% and not somewhere between the 1-4% estimated by most legitimate research, we would still hit 360,000 deaths if only 1 in 5 people in the United States got this.  If we were to push that out to the 70% number estimated to construe a solid herd immunity, they we would need 231 million people to catch covid.  Again assuming an incredibly low and unrealistic death rate of .6%, we'd be looking at 1.4 million dead Americans.  If we used even a 1% mortality estimate, we'd be looking at enough dead people as the entire population of all of Houston Texas, the 4th biggest city in the US.  A 4% mortality rate would be about 10 million people, or the entire population of New York City and Phoenix combined (the 1st and 5th biggest US cities).

Now go back and look at your numbers, if we scaled up the US 2020 population to match the scale of 1918 flu pandemic, we would count 2.2 million deaths by your math.  With a 1% mortality rate and enough infections for herd immunity, we are looking at 2.3 million deaths by COVID today.

if you want do a real comparison of the past, you have to treat  apples to apples.  That comparison should scare everyone.  The only reason we are sitting at only 90k, is because we locked down when we did. 

[Balta1701]

5 minutes ago, michelangelosmonkey said:

I get so twisted in the arguments.  He was an asshole for not doing anything about the spread of the virus from Italy and he is an asshole for doing something to stop the spread of the virus from Italy.  And you are really positioning yourself as arguing in a non-partisan way?  

1. We should have accepted testing help from overseas but Trump continues to assert for no reason that those tests are bad.

2. We needed to ramp up testing capacity in other ways and did not. As a consequence, we did not see the first cases imported from Italy.

3. Shutting down international travel was necessary, but it needed to have important restrictions. People had to arrive back safely, be held in a safe location, and then be quarantined. Neither of those happened, and that absolutely worsened the situation in New York and elsewhere. Other countries can handle this but ours can't. 

4. The Federal government needed to be out in front calling for people to stay home, not vice-versa. They needed to manage the shutdown so that it was sufficient enough to reduce the number of cases, not level it off. That lack of planning is why we still have a plateau in cases when so many other well run countries have gone down. 

[michelangelosmonkey]

Just now, Balta1701 said:

No,  but I definitely believe they don't have a thousand people dying per day right now. They got it under control within 2 months, from January to March cases dropped to very few. From March to May, we leveled out and declared we can't do any better. 

I really think it is fascinating what has happened in China.  I mean there should be ten million dead there, right?  Everyone has damaged lungs from the smog, everyone smokes, backwards medical care compared to US, massively crowded cities.   Sure they shut down Wuhan...after a MONTH...and after letting hundreds of thousands travel all over China for the New Years...to every village...to every big city.  They aren't telling us something or there is something unique about the virus.  There is a missing bit of evidence.  How can India have only a couple of thousand deaths?  Its really weird.

[southsider2k5]

20 minutes ago, michelangelosmonkey said:

I was JOKING to my class.  But yes...the president should have done something...like declare it a public health crisis and put in travel restrictions from China a few days later...which is what he did in spite the criticisms of racism that he received (and both Pelosi and Cuomo encouraging their citizens to go to Chinese New Year celebrations over the warning of the Federal government.  But...you know...all Trumps fault.  What would have you done?   

If this isn't about politics, why would you try to equate two Democrats responses to the President who has a WAY higher level of information and clearance than both the Speaker of hte House and the Governor of NY.  Why didn't he try to explain how serious this was to the country, instead of saying that Xi was doing a great job, this was a media driven hoax, and that it would go away by April?  Why didn't he stick with the serious message and try to prove his point? 

[Iwritecode]

35 minutes ago, michelangelosmonkey said:

Sorry...yes I was thinking of 1918...100 million people and 675,000 dead, 1957: 172 million people  116,000 dead, 1968 200 million people 100,000 dead.  Today 330 million 85,000 dead.  

So balancing for today's population

1918: 2.2 million

1957: 222,000

1968: 165,000 

Today: 85,000

And just for fun, bubonic plague Italy

14th Century: 200,000,000

How do you figure it is 6 times more deadly or 3?  Not semantics...math.   Either way its a deadly virus.  Viruses can be bad.  

China's actions were those of a totalitarian state that was purposely hiding things.  I've looked at the time lines we took and the deaths and trying to be fair minded thinking how do you decide where the prudent decision is.  I think the president took, and was deeply criticized for, some big decisions.   He missed on some too.  If you want to live in your tent and blame all unknown on him...whatever.  

Now put the number of months/years it took to get to those numbers.

[caulfield12]

1 hour ago, Balta1701 said:

Europe? I dunno, but I am in this thread on record on March 3 saying "OMG we completely f***ed up we need to close down the west coast right now and this is going to be a nightmare everyone panic". 

I coudln't know about the NY outbreak...because the US refused, for whatever reason, to accept testing assistance from the WHO. 

Because they wanted to build out their own (more complicated) tests that could supposedly test for more things simultaneously...so part of it was being a bit stubborn about utilizing preexisting infrastructure, the other part was general distrust of the WHO or pretty much any multi-national or multi-lateral organization.

[southsider2k5]

12 minutes ago, michelangelosmonkey said:

You honestly can't believe the numbers from China???   Still India, Indonesia, Pakistan?   Something weird about this virus.  Oh thats right...they don't have Trump as president intentionally killing us. 

 

Trump trusted them.

[ron883]

2 minutes ago, southsider2k5 said:

Trump trusted them.

You know that for a fact?

[southsider2k5]

6 minutes ago, michelangelosmonkey said:

I really think it is fascinating what has happened in China.  I mean there should be ten million dead there, right?  Everyone has damaged lungs from the smog, everyone smokes, backwards medical care compared to US, massively crowded cities.   Sure they shut down Wuhan...after a MONTH...and after letting hundreds of thousands travel all over China for the New Years...to every village...to every big city.  They aren't telling us something or there is something unique about the virus.  There is a missing bit of evidence.  How can India have only a couple of thousand deaths?  Its really weird.

India shutdown as they were getting their first cases, not 8 weeks later.

[southsider2k5]

1 minute ago, Yearnin' for Yermin said:

You know that for a fact?

Its either that or he lied to all of us, which is also very plausible.